Copy/Paste: The First Step Is To Admit You Have A Problem

Thanks to Juster, I have come up with a better way to handle it.

    my %functions = ( 'status'       => \&create_new_request_status,
                      'barcode'      => \&update_request_barcode,
                      'lab_director' => \&update_request_lab_director,
                      'library_type' => \&update_request_library_type,
                      'request_name' => \&update_request_name,
                      'source'       => \&update_request_source,
                      'species'      => \&update_request_species, ) ;

    my $out_url = 'request_info.cgi' ;
    $out_url .= '?test=1' if defined $cgi->param( 'test' ) ;
    $output .= $cgi->h2( $cgi->a( { href => $out_url }, 'Request Table' ) ) ;

    ## show specific run info
    if ( 0 ) { }    # BLANK to make adding and changing elsifs easier
    elsif ( defined $cgi->param( 'request_id' ) ) {
        for my $key ( $cgi->param() ) {
            if ( $functions{ $key } ) {
                my $data ;
                $data->{ request_id } = $cgi->param( 'request_id' ) ;
                if ( $key eq 'status' ) {    # status is different
                    for my $word ( qw{ status program notes } ) {
                        $data->{ $word } = $cgi->param( $word ) ;
                        }
                    $functions{ $key }->( $data ) ;
                    }
                else {
                    $data->{ val } = $cgi->param( $key ) ;
                    $functions{ $key }->( $data ) ;
                    }
                }
            }
        my $request_id = $cgi->param( 'request_id' ) ;
        $output .= $cgi->h2( 'Request #' . $request_id ) ;
        $output .= $cgi->div( show_request( $request_id ) ) ;
        }
    else {
        $output .= $cgi->div( show_list() ) ;    # show full table
        }

Of course, if I had another table showing what fields I need to put into each input hash, that would make the code even simpler.